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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Wholemeal Date Scones

We love going to Lorne for weekend holidays and we are always at Lorne for at least once every year without fail. As part of our routine at Lorne, I will buy one wholemeal date scone for me and a couple of chocolate croissants or muffins for my husband and son from my favourite local bakery for our breakfast. No matter how much I love eating these scones, I never thought of baking these for just myself because my husband and son don't like and wouldn't want to eat these scones when we are at Lorne. When I know that Lena from Frozen wings, Joyce from Kitchen Flavours and I are going to bake "Scones" for our Bake-Along, all I can think is to bake my favourite wholemeal date scones...

Co-incidentally, my husband and son had decided to go out on a Saturday morning. I knew immediately that I had seized this opportunity to bake these scones... solely for me. Here I was enjoying every single second and minutes baking these lovely scones and enjoying every single bite of the freshly baked scones... and this is what I called my "me-time" :D

These scones that I baked are from the book, Mix and Bake by Belinda Jeffery. They are fabulous and melt in my mouth when I had them. In fact, I reckon that they are even better than the ones that I had at Lorne :p

This is always my favourite, wholemeal date scone.

Making the scone mix

Baking the scones

With strawberries and fresh whipped cream... Yum!

Check out its melt-in-the mouth texture...

Here's the recipe from the book, Mix and Bake by Belinda Jeffery(with my modification in blue)

1 2/3 cup (250g) wholemeal self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting

1 tbsp caster sugar (replaced with raw caster sugar)

100g cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks

150g pitted dates

100ml buttermilk

1 tbsp honey, slightly warmed

Preheat oven to 200°C (or 180°C fan forced) . Line a baking tray with two layers of baking paper and set it aside.

In a large bowl, sift all dry ingredients together, then rub in the butter, chop the dates and mix them in.

In another bowl, whisk together buttermilk and honey. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and pour in the honeyed buttermilk. Mix everything to form a soft dough.

Lightly knead everything together and tip it out onto a floured chopping board. Shape the dough into long rectangle, flattening the top to form a thickness about 4-5 cm.

Cut the dough into fat little triangles with floured knife. Sit the scones closely on a prepared baking tray and dust them with a little extra flour.

Bake for 17 min or until scones are golden in colour. Leave them to cool on a wire rack for at least 10 min and serve while they are warm.

i shall keep in mind lorne the next time i visit mel if i have time. Had missed going to the GOR the last trip. I havent actually baked anything with dates and your wholemeal ones sounds great and very nice texture too I like baking too when no one is in the house but it's quite impossible..haha..i just tell them not talk to me especially when i'm weighing my ingredients!

Hi Zoe, thanks for visiting my blog and for your kind words. Hope you visit regularly and keep enjoying the recipes I post.

I love dates and every year I wait impatiently for Ramadan as that's when dates are in abundance all over Singapore. I love sticky toffee pudding made with dates, but your scones look wonderful too - perfect texture!

Hi Zoe, Your scones looks lovely with the speckled wholemeal and sounds delicious with dates! Yeah, I love to bake when the house is empty! Most of the time I bake in the morning, when there's nobody around, only me, my kitchen and my oven, and my cup of tea! Hehe!

I laughed out loud when I read your post, we almost have identical story except I have never been to Lorne lol! I only baked my scones for myself too as my sons are not into them and I too added dates into mine! Talk about coincidence!

Zoe, thanks for visiting The Saucy Gourmet, I look forward to sharing with you! These scones look incredible. I have a couple scone recipes posted on my blog, gonna go back and see if any are worth linking in.

Wow another fabulous scone recipe! First is Lena's, now yours...yums! Wholewheat is the way to go, healthy and won't feel the guilt when chowing down seconds, lol! Will keep this recipe in my to do list. :)

I am crazy about scones and am always looking for new recipes. I make scones at least a couple times a month and my family always wolfs them down. I will put these on my to-bake list, they look delicious!!

Oh! my hubby will certainly love these wholemeal date scones! Looks so tempting & appetizing as you've described them! And love Zoe's thought of the day picture! Will certainly make this for my hubby which also a fan of scones & lots of cream to go with it too! LOL

These would be scones I would bake for me also. They are just scrumptious looking! LOVE your blog title. I so agree with it. That's why I originally started baking, it was always something fun to do with my kids when they were little and I needed "a break". It was me time snuck into them time and we were all happy. Now, they are almost grown and I still bake with my youngest. Nice times. Thanks for stopping by my blog.

Anne, I think biscuits is quite similar to scones in some ways. They are both mix and bake kind of recipes. I think it should be ok if you are linking up with us. I will tell Joyce and Lena about this :D

According to Australian Women Weekly at http://www.aww.com.au/food/expert-q-a/2013/11/how-to-make-self-raising-flour/, you can make your own self raising flour by adding 2 tsp baking powder into each cup of plain flour. To make 250g of wholemeal self raising flour, you need to add 3 1/3 tsp baking powder into plain wholemeal flour. Cheers!